Google’s Social Circle & Social Search May Not Violate Any Privacy Laws But It Gives Me The Creeps

When I clicked on the link that said Results from people in your social circle for google social search it took me to a page that was just content from my Social Circle. I was a little disturbed by this. First I do not want search results from my Social Circle, whatever that means, I want it from everybody. Secondly, where are they getting this information? How did Google know who is in my Social Circle?

So like a good little librarian I started digging. I went back to the page initial page and clicked on the link for My social circle.

This took me too a page with a list of names that make up my Social Circle . There were a LOT of names on that list. But how did they get there?

There doesn’t seem to be a way to simply add or remove a person either. Google seems to know everywhere I’m connected to these people. Even places I didn’t know or remember I was connected with them.

Frankly I’m creeped out. I do not remember giving Gmail permission to go through my contacts and correlate them to other sites.

Since I’m not interesting in Social Search I started looking for a way to turn it off. Guess what? There isn’t one.

The only option to not see Social Circle search results is to log out of the Google account (or avoid having a single direct connection linked to the account). – ghacks.net

Even more disturbing to me is I can’t find much of anyone talking about the privacy issues. Yes I know this information is already available on the internet, it’s the idea of someone or some company compiling it all in one place. There is a big difference between it being scattered out there willy nilly and someone collecting an analyzing it.

It does not work the way the original video demonstration said it would. It claims you can remove a network like Twitter. Where? I deleted my Google Profile after all the Buzz brouhaha so I haven’t had one for a while now.

On my Social Content page it says there is 0 content from my Google profile (because I don’t have one?) Yet on my Social Circle page it tells me there are 145 contacts from links listed on my Google profile. What profile?

Add or remove the person from your Friends, Family, or Coworkers groups in your Google contacts

If someone you don’t know shows up in your social search results, it’s likely that they’re connected to someone you do know. For example, if you’re following someone on Twitter, and that person is following five other people, those five other people are also included in your social circle. To see where each connection comes from, view the text on the search results page that says “Connected through [person] on [service].”

Again I don’t have a Google profile so where do I go to remove these links?

Frankly, this maybe the thing that finally drives me away from Google. Maybe there is a way to opt out, to turn it off, but I sure couldn’t find it. It seems like the Buzz fiasco all over again but worse. This time no one is paying attention.

Part of my concern is they claim they are getting these contacts from my Google Profile, which I don’t have. So where are they getting them from ? Are they lying? Is it a computer fluke? More importantly how do I turn it off?

Think it’s remembering your social connections from your old profile? Or reconstructing them from the profiles of others who are connected to you through gmail and g-reader? While I actually love this feature, I agree that it’s not clear how we can control our own connections easily. Moving people out of ‘friends, family, coworkers’ groups in gmail contacts might help.

I have the added problem of having most of my info associated with a very old pre-gmail google account. But to synch with my droid phone, I’ve had to move info to my gmail based google account. I end up being connected with myself (in both directions) and having crazy recursive nightmares!

I suspect its remembering them from my profile from before I deleted it. But that bothers me for 2 reason. First its not how they SAY they are getting my contacts. Second it appears that the google profile is the only way to remove those connected sites like Twitter. Well I don’t have one, so how do I remove them?

I also don’t like that you can not opt out. The only way to eliminate Social Circle is to sign out of Google completely. If you can opt to only search within your Social Circle then you should be able to opt to search only outside of it without logging out.

As it happens, I use Gmail and its chat function for my Second Life avatar (but I haven’t added anything explicitly to my Google Profile), and the contacts listed were some (but not all) of my Gmail contacts that I’ve chatted with (or at least invited them to chat with me).

[…] view is more in line with Bobbi Newman, who says: “Google’s Social Circle & Social Search may not violate any privacy laws but it gives me… This is a lot like finding out that you have a stalker – only this one isn’t human, […]

It really creeped me out too – I kept getting results from a blog written by a girl who used to harass me. I’ve not had any contact with her for years, although we have some common FaceBook friends. I don’t want Google to associate me with my FaceBook friends-of-friends that I haven’t spoken to for years, especially if they’re people I hate! Besides – If Google associates me with anyone, it should only be with people I’ve interacted with through Google – Gmail, Picasa, orkut and so on. I don’t know if me and that girl have ever had any connection or friend-of-friend connection on any Google product, but either way, I find it kind of creepy for Google to suddenly tell me who is in my “social circle”, especially when they are people I haven’t talked to in years – Not even everyone I talk to is in my “social circle”.

[…] was trying so hard to raise privacy fears about — has been around for over a year. Even the links that Burson Marsteller included in its pitch were to articles that were almost a year old, including one about how the feature was […]

[…] and it wasn’t until after I’d tweeted it that I learned that the PR firm referenced one of my blog posts in their attempts to smear Google! Crazy and Weird. Especially since I’ve written far more […]

[…] talked about this when I wrote Google’s Social Circle & Social Search May Not Violate Any Privacy Laws But It Gives Me The Cr…. Google states they were basing my Social Circle and Social Search on my Google Profile, except I […]